February 5, 2007
What happens when a group of workers take over their workplace and try to run it without private owners, professional managers, or the government? 10,000 workers in 200 workplaces in Argentina are trying to find out.
Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein’s movie “The Take” provided many non-Argentineans an introduction to Argentina’s movement of “recuperated factories.” But beyond that information has been difficult to get. Now a new book edited by Marina Sitrin called “Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina” (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006) provides a revealing portrait of the movement.
The story begins in 2001, when the Argentine economy collapsed under pressure of IMF demands. Unemployment reached 35 percent. Direct action movements of unemployed workers known as “piqueteros,” mostly women, began blocking highways and then negotiating with the authorities for subsistence programs and public works employment.
The example of the “piqueteros” spread to a more and more disgruntled population. Discontent came to a head as the government accepted even greater austerity demands from the IMF and imposed a state of siege to suppress popular protest. Every bank account in the country was frozen. On the night of December 19, 2001, people from all over Buenos Aires took to the streets banging pts and plans and marched on Congress and the presidential palace. The next day, spontaneous street demonstrations forced Fernando de la Rua to resign the presidency. People throughout the country from diverse class backgrounds began meeting in “self-convened neighborhood assemblies.”
In the context of the crisis, people began improvising new economic institutions. New bakeries and gardens began providing food, often with support and distribution through the neighborhood assemblies. Soon five to seven million people were involved in barter networks, trading not only basic goods but also services – for example, psychoanalysis for computer repair. They also began taking over abandoned buildings, notably banks, and reopening them as neighborhood centers.
Meanwhile, many bosses stopped paying their workers and eventually closed their workplaces. The idea of taking over the workplaces emerged in response. One textile worker says the takeover at the Brukman factory “wasn’t an occupation at first, but it became one without us intending it.”
“Together, everyone in the factory thought about our situation, and decided to stay to see if the bosses would decide to give us a little money so we could celebrate the holidays with our families. . . . We waited two months for the bosses to come back. We went to the unions, the Ministry of Work, all with the intention of getting the boss to come back and offer us a solution. He never came. So we decided to work.”
At the Chilavert printing factory,
“When we realized that they were going to come and take the machines, well, then we had to make a decision. The time for thinking had ended and we took over the workplace. . . You know that if they take the machines from you, you’ll end up on the street. It’s a reflex – you don’t think about cooperatives, you don’t think about anything. Defending your source of work is a reflex.”
More than 200 such “recuperated workplaces” are currently in operation. Almost all were closed, abandoned, in bankruptcy, and/or in debt and in arrears in payments to their employees. Seventy percent were initiated in the 2001-2 period, but such takeovers are still occurring. Most are in the Buenos Aires area, but others are scattered in all parts of the country. They employ about 10,000 workers in total.
Many of the recuperated workplaces faced violent attacks on behalf of former owners. When the owners of the Fenix Salud health clinic it down, for example, workers had slipped in a side door, occupied their workplace, and began providing medical services to the public. Then one day, one clinic coop participant recalled,
“When we arrived and saw the number of police surrounding the whole building, as well as assault vehicles, fences, firefighters, and helicopters flying overhead, we were asking, what are they doing? Especially considering the number of people we had.”
The police drove a van into the clinic, broke up equipment, and welded down the door. Then began a process that has been repeated over and over again when recuperated workplaces have been threatened.
“When other cooperativists, others I the movement, began hearing about what was going on, they all started to come here. This is what solidarity means. First there were ten of us, then twenty, then a little later fifty, then more and more. Someone brought a big truck for us to use, and with that, the 200 people now outside the clinic shut down the street.”
“As the hours went by, it gave us an overwhelming feeling that we were right. We might be crazy, but still people were coming to help us and support us in this. People from the legislature started approaching us, neighborhood assemblies came out and supported us, and even our neighbors came out to help.”
“We eventually negotiated our way in again with everyone’s support. For a month they left a police watchman. Not any More. Now I’m a watchman, and we share the duty within the cooperative. We have no intention of taking over the clinic to do something bad. No, we have taken it over to make it work again, to bring back our source of work. It’s as simple as that.”
A future post will describe the legal, political, economic, and human dimensions of the recuperated workplaces and consider their implications.